“Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom His favor rests.” ~Luke 2:14 (NIV)
Scripture teaches we are living in the age of grace. Grace is Gods unmerited favor towards us. We didn’t do anything to deserve it. He just gives it. Much like a parent does with their child. Children can be disobedient and need to be corrected but that has nothing to do with how much the child is loved. God loves us so much He sent His one and only Son to die for our sin. For a parent, that is unfathomable and what is even harder to comprehend is that He did it for us when we didn’t even care, when we were in no position to even reciprocate that love. We are told in Romans 5:8 “But God demonstrates His own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (NLT) While we were doing our own thing and digging our own holes, we were on God’s mind. He was preparing to pour out His favor on us. The Lord was honed in on preparing for us everything we needed in this life to overcome and live abundantly. He was preparing for our redemption and restoration as sons and daughters of the Most High! He sets us up to make us shine in our coming and going. He makes every day to begin with new mercies for yesterday’s failures and causes streams of grace to flow from His throne towards us without ceasing so that we can live our best lives every single day.
As crazy as it may sound, many of us have a hard time learning to receive from God. We think we need to work hard for everything we get and while working hard is important, there are blessings in this life we just can’t work hard enough for. God wants us to receive from Him things we never worked for. Things we could not have made happen if we wanted to. He wants to pour out His favor and gifts to us just because He loves us. He wants us to aim higher than our abilities and dream for more than we could ever achieve and then lean on Him in peace knowing His favor rests on us. He tells us in Isaiah 30:15,18 “In repentance and rest is your salvation, in quietness and trust is your strength, but you would have none of it…Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you; therefore, He will rise up to show you compassion.” (NIV) What a promise! Even when we don’t want anything to do with Him or do things His way, God says He will rise up to show us compassion. How much more do you think He wants to pour all He has into our lives when we love Him and others despite our circumstances or how they act, just because He said so? How much do you think it pleases your Heavenly Father when you choose to obey Him even when you don’t understand or agree? Have confidence in God’s love for you, He demonstrated it with the ultimate sacrifice anybody could make. He stripped Himself of His deity and humbled Himself to hang on a cross and die a sinner’s death to bring you and me into a right relationship with Him. Can't we believe He will make sure we have everything we need and more to live an abundant life before Him?
If God is for us, who can ever be against us? Since He did not spare even his own Son but gave Him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else? ~Romans 8:31-32 (NLT)
What are you doing today in obedience to God’s word that you don’t completely understand?
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